


Hindsight

by GatesKeeper



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Dean Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, Gen, M/M, Minor Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, POV Lisa Braeden, POV Outsider, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GatesKeeper/pseuds/GatesKeeper
Summary: Lisa sees Dean again for the first time in over a decade.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 80
Kudos: 1247





	Hindsight

_Damn,_ Lisa thinks the moment she spots him, sitting at an empty table for four. She may have been wearing her wedding ring for four years now, but that doesn’t mean she can’t appreciate a good view when she sees it.

He tucks his phone away, green eyes scanning the restaurant mostly casually; but she can tell the moment he spots her—the way his neck snaps back in her direction, the slight parting of his lips—right before he ducks his head behind his hastily picked-up menu. She shakes her head. Probably should put him out of his mystery.

“Dean,” she says in a friendly voice, sliding into the seat across from him.

The menu drops to the table with a plastic _thwap_.

“You, uh…know who I am?” he asks, cautiously, even as she rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, next time you want to memory wipe your old girlfriend, you might want to think about the fact that she’d already introduced you to her entire family, has a phone with hundreds of pictures of you in it, and--” she grins to see him squirm. “Would probably be curious about all the weird symbols underneath her rugs when it came time to vacuum.”

He scrubs his hand through his hair in a gesture so familiar, it brings an unexpected ache to her chest, but she pushes it down. You can miss a sunset after it’s gone, after all, but there’s no point in wishing for it back—especially when the sunrise is beautiful, too.

“I’m—sorry about that. Well, about everything really,” Dean murmurs, sincerely, and she grabs his arm and squeezes.

“I’m not saying that messing with my mind without my consent is OK—because it’s far from it—but I didn’t come over here to beat you up about it. I figure you feel guilty enough. I came over here to tell you to stop it.”

He opens his mouth to protest, but she just lifts an eyebrow.

“I forgot how well you know me,” he grumbles into his coffee.

“ _You_ forgetting about _me_. Isn’t that ironic?”

They share a chuckle.

They chat for a couple of minutes. She tells him all about how Ben is doing in college, only slightly grimacing when she mentions he has a girlfriend now. But Dean catches it anyway and laughs, loudly, at her expense.

“Married?” he asks, eyes on her ring, so then she talks about Jeremy and how she’d adopted his daughter, Renley, shortly after the wedding. By the time she mentions that she now owns the yoga studio she used to work at, his shoulders have relaxed substantially, his smiles becoming more comfortable.

And yet, she can’t help but notice his little distractions—the way he watches the door when he’s not watching her face, the instant awareness he has that the waitress is approaching to take his order (“Still waiting for some people. Give us a few minutes?”), and the nearly-imperceptible jiggle of his leg under the table.

She remembers this, too—though she thought she’d gotten used to it, in the over a year they spent together. After all, of course someone who just lost his younger brother while trying to avert the _Apocalypse_ would have that in the back of his mind. Of course someone who fought monsters for a living had to be constantly aware of his surroundings.

Back when they were living together, he had given her and Ben as much attention as he could—she knew that and was grateful for it. But it also makes her appreciate her current life so much more—the way her husband looks at her in her little black dress like she’s all he can see.

“So, how about you?” she prompts Dean, leaning back in her seat and shaking out of her thoughts. “Still saving the world?”

“A few times, yeah. We’ve also been the ones to break it on occasion.”

“Well, nobody’s perfect.”

He snorts, “Not even close.”

“You mentioned waiting for someone. Is Sam…?” she starts, before the realization he might be expecting a date comes over her. “Do you want me to…?”

“No, no, you’re fine,” he insists, with a wave of his hand. “Yeah, Sam and me live in this, uh—well, to be honest, it’s kind of a James Bond lair in Kansas—but we don’t hunt together so much anymore. He and his wife, Eileen, are currently on a banshee case up in Washington.” He smiles when he says it, which kind of surprises her, but makes her feel weirdly proud, too.

“Then what brings you to my neck of the woods?” she prompts, just as the door of the diner shakes with bells announcing a new arrival.

And she doesn’t have to turn around to know that this _someone_ is who Dean is waiting for because his whole body twists in that direction, all distractions forgotten.

Which is why she's not expecting a boy about Ben’s age to approach. He's floppy-haired and wearing the Winchesters' custom three layers. “Hello,” he greets her with his hand up, apparently completely unconcerned with why a strange woman is sitting at their table. “I’m Jack,” he offers, plopping down beside her.

She’s about to respond when the dark-haired, blue-eyed man that was behind him finally gets a look at her. “Lisa,” he says, with surprise.

“Do I know you…?”

Dean blushes, “Uh, Cas was the one who—” he makes a swiping motion over his head with his hand, which she takes to mean he is the one who altered her memories.

She thinks she accepts this news as well as can be expected.

“So are you a witch or a fairy or something…?” she asks this Cas, once the waitress comes by with extra menus, under the assumption that she was eating with them now.

“I was an angel,” he explains, with a tilt of his head, like he’s confused why she wouldn’t already know that. But then Dean is leaning in to ask him a question and Cas is whispering back, so she pretends to look for something to order. A glance up a few minutes later shows that they’ve stopped talking—with words at least—and yet, a whole other conversation is happening between their eyes.

A memory comes back to her—not a big, important memory—just a day that she and Dean were sitting on the couch together, listening to the rain pounding against the roof and she’d asked him if he had any friends he wanted to reach out to. “Nah,” he’d said. “My kind of work makes it hard to connect with people. And even when you do…My best friend’s probably glad to be hanging out in Heaven without me.”

She’d thought—well, what any normal person would think—and didn’t pry. And Dean didn’t offer any insight. Even when he brought himself to talk about Sam, he had never mentioned this best friend again. All that time she’d spent trying to help fill the hole inside him and she didn’t even know about all the pieces that were missing.

“Sam told me to apologize on their behalf,” Jack says, happily, from beside her, nodding towards Cas and Dean. “He told me that people sometimes get uncomfortable when they stare too long and that I should make polite conversation so that others don’t feel ignored while they have their ‘moment.’”

She takes a sip of water, “You’re doing a great job.”

“Thank you,” he beams and she can’t help but like the kid, even if he’s a bit strange.

“So, I gotta ask, how do you fit into all--” she makes a vague gesture. “This? How did you get involved with them?”

“Oh,” he thinks, brow furrowing, and she prepares to hear how they rescued him from a den of werewolves or maybe stopped him from being sacrificed in some weird ritual. “I guess the most succinct answer would be that I am a Nephilim—part angel, part human. Dean and Castiel are my fathers.”

And with that casually-dropped bomb, he reaches over and taps Cas on the shoulder. “Can I get fries with breakfast?”

**Author's Note:**

> Like this work? Consider checking out some of my other Destiel stories featuring Dean and Cas reuiniting with their exes:
> 
> [Love Me Not](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943404)  
> [A Thing of the Past](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22929460)  
> Interested in something longer? Check out: [Truth Be Told](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621739/chapters/51558172)  
> Want to talk to someone about SPN?  
> I'm [@_GatesKeeper on Twitter](https://twitter.com/_GatesKeeper)  
> and [Gates_Keeper on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/gates-keeper)


End file.
